Lifeguard to the rescue...or NOT

For the past 10 weeks, I have been working at becoming a lifeguard. My plan is to finish all my lifeguarding stuff by next summer so I can be a lifeguard June 2010. This past monday, I had my final lifeguarding exam. I was schedualed to last from 6:30 - 10pm. WE were to know how to do CPR, rescue 3 victims (drowning non-swimmers, drowning weak swimmers, and unconcious victims) and spinals. There were 11 people in my class, including myself.

Throughout the 10 weeks of 3 hours a week of training, I became quite close with the people in my class. There was a girl named Kathleen (pronounced Catlin) who is asian and she's a speed swimmer. It was lots of fun being partnered with her during rescues because we were the best swimmers in the class :) and she's super funny.

So, this past monday, i had an exam that day, then i went to my lifeguarding exam, and the next morning, I had my social exam. The bad thing was, i hadn't started studying for my social exam. Since I had this lifeguarding thing all evening, it didn't really give me a chance to study. But at least I was getting this lifeguarding thing over, right?

So, throughout the entire lifeguarding exam, I felt i was doing great. I remembered everything, and the examiner didn't have to remind me of anything. The exam went overtime, finishing at 11pm. We were all exhausted, and I started stressing about the exam I had the next day. I was the last person to do my spinal rescue. I focused as best as I could, remembering everything. Then, after we got dressed, we had to wait in the pool lobby to be called into a room to find out if we passed or not. Everyone was anxious, and nervous to find out. I was the last person to find out. By that time, it was midnight. I was getting impatient, and tired. He called me in. "Hi nicole, You did extremely well in you exam. I was quite impressed. You definately showed confidence in every rescue and despite you got the hardest situations, you did great....but unfortunately I had to fail you because you did one mistake on your spinal." were the words he used.

"WHAT!?!!?!?!?!?!?!? I FAILED????? How that this be? What do you mean? My parents spent all this money, and I put in ALL this time, and I FAIL?????" is what was going through my mind. "Keep it together Nicole, don't cry! Whatever you do....DONT cry!!"

"What did I do wrong?" I managed to say. "Well, when you were carrying your victim in your spinal rescue, you weren't squeezing their arms tight enough. You had to support their neck more". The rest of what happened, I cannot tell you, for I have no clue myself what happened. All i can remember is that he handed me a piece of paper and a box of smarties and wished me goodluck.

As I left the room, with this HUGE lump in my throat, I went up to my dad, who had been somewhat impatient to go...I told him I fail. He didn't believe me. I showed him the paper.

When I got home, I just cried. I kept thinking to myself...."It's just lifeguarding". But then I thought about ALL the studying I could have done that evening. I cried myself to sleep.

In the morning, my eyes were so red from spending hours and hours in chlorine and from crying the night before. I woke up at 9:00am and started studying. I spent 30 minutes aswell praying. Praying that God would calm me and help me to focus and do well on my exam.

I feel pretty good about my social exam, considering I only studied for 2 hours. But what was really great, was that God took that sadness away from me about failing something I really worked hard at, and I felt his presence throughout the entire exam. :)

So, this weekend, I'm going to have to spend 10 hours, both doing the shortened course again and the exam. Life comes with failures. But God is always there when those failures come.

Stress

I've never really experienced stress in my life before. Yes, there have been times where things have BEEN stressful...but I've never really been stressed....at least as not as stressed as I am now.

Exams are in exactly 7 days. The teachers are PILING us with homework...is that even legal? I mean I am trying to get my homework done, nevermind exams!

I have 5 exams this year. English, Science, Bible, Social Studies and Math. I think that the bible and english one with be the easiest. All the others ones will probably be the hardest. Social Studies and Science are a lot of memorizing (which is my weakness!) and Math has always been one of my weaker subjects.

I have been stressed out for 2 or 3 weeks now...and being stressed 24/7 I think could almost be unhealthy to me! Like seriously.....I'm probably going to get wrinkles in 2 years because of how stressed I am. I wouldn't be surprised if I started getting gray hair!!!! Well, 14 more days until my last exam. So that means 14 more days of being completely stressed.

Within all of my studying for exams (which I haven't exactly started for yet), homework and other stuff, I have a lifeguarding exam coming up soon. If I do one thing wrong...I fail the course. Which would totally suck, because then I would have to do the 10 week course ALL over again!

I have been busy EVERY day this week. Today I even stayed home from school to get homework, projects and assignments and art projects and speech stuff done.

So ya, that's my life right now. I feel this huge weight on me right now. The sad thing is...is that I'm having trouble seeing God through it all. I know that if I lean on him, he will give me strength etc. But lately, I've been trying to do it all on my own....and that weight just keeps feeling heavier and HEAVIER. Please God! take this stress away!